Fit for the Future: the new 10 Year Health Plan for England – what does it mean for children’s health?

On 3rd July, the UK Government published “Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England”. It aims to modernise the NHS and has three key aims:

But, if you live in England, what does that actually mean for you and your child? We have read the full 168 pages of the report, so you don’t have to! Read on for our summary.

There is relatively little in the report that will specifically improve the situation of parents in hospital, indeed the aim of the plan is to move care from hospital into the community. We support the ambition for fewer and shorter hospital visits for all patients. This would have a significant impact on the stress and anxiety a stay in hospital can bring for children, their parents, and their family and friends.

We support the ambition to make the NHS more joined up and more focused on the patient’s needs. Parents will be able to manage their children’s health care through the ‘My Children’ section of the NHS app – which should make coordinating appointments, different specialities and medications easier (report page 51). More digital and telephone appointments will also be made available, making it easier to manage your time by, for example, not requiring you to travel to a hospital and have your child miss significant time out of school. For the same reason, most outpatient appointments will gradually shift to community-based hubs, as part of the development of a “Neighbourhood Health Service” (pg. 9).

The plan states that the NHS app will also “use continuous monitoring to help make proactive management of patients the new normal, allowing clinicians to reach out at the first signs of deterioration to prevent an emergency admission to hospital” (pg. 11). This could be significant for children with long-term health conditions but it is not yet clear how it will be implemented.

The plan also has limited information on children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). The plan states that the “core principles of early intervention and support, without the need for diagnosis, particularly apply for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)” (pg. 70). We welcome the ambition that professionals serving SEND children “are more effectively deployed spending time supporting children not on bureaucracy and admin” (pg. 70). For these reforms to be truly effective, the same must be made true for parents.

We look forward to more detailed plans for how this plan will impact on paediatric care in England.

More broadly, the plan is committed to the goal of “raising the healthiest generation of children ever” (page 11). This includes:

  • Genome mapping of all babies at birth, with parental consent (pg. 21);
  • Better early years provision, including through greater use of health visitors (pgs. 36-37);
  • Increase vaccine uptake (pgs. 36, 73)
  • Better support for children’s oral health (pg. 10, 31);
  • Greater restrictions on smoking and vaping (pg. 61);
  • Tackling childhood obesity and improving physical activity (pgs. 12, 58, 63, 65);
  • Greater support for child and adolescent mental health (pgs. 12, 69-70)
  • Expansion of free school meals (pg. 12, 63)

You can read the Executive Summary here, and the full report here.